The Government launched a guide to tackling environmental emissions currently generated by households. It also announced that eight million Osram energy efficient light bulbs would be given out to housing association households over a 12-month period, beginning in September 2008.
Greening the UK's 27 million existing households, which produce more than a quarter of all UK carbon emissions, is essential if the Government is to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. Yet, until now, no definitive guidance on how to do this has been produced.
The light bulb scheme, an initiative put together by EDF Energy, EAGA and the Housing Corporation, aims to reduce the electricity bills of the two million housing association households who might be vulnerable to fuel poverty and is expected to save 1.14 million tonnes of CO2 over a 10-year period.
Each household will receive four light bulbs of various wattages with lifetimes of ten times longer (10,000 hours) than regular bulbs (1,000) and they will use 80% less energy than a standard one.
The initiative is part of the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT), and by focusing on housing association households, ensures that it is reaching CERT's priority groups of lower income and older households.
The publication, Fit For the Future - The Green Homes Retrofit Manual, published by the Housing Corporation and written by ESD, has been extensively peer reviewed and puts together essential information for any retrofit work to households being conducted in the UK. It deals with greening existing affordable housing.
The Housing Corporation is conscious that there is a lot of mistaken and misleading information available to housing associations. Having the maximum amount of accurate information available to them in one place should ensure that more affordable homes are brought up to a decent ecological standard, making the investment of housing associations go further.
The immediate effect of the manual will be to emphasise the importance of the environmental performance of housing association and local authority stock, and to inform of what meassures can be taken.
